In 2008, I spent three weeks in Oxford. I was going to say it’s well-documented on this blog, but that’s a lie, actually; I’d love to pull some travel posts out of the 2,000+ pictures I have from that time, many of which I still like. I do however mention it a fair bunch.

What I don’t think I’ve ever talked about is the two weeks I spent wondering if I could maybe — possibly — if it might be viable for me to find a job, and stay.

At the time, I had a laptop, and I had my fandom corners and friends online, but I didn’t have a blog, or a shop, or anything resembling income. I didn’t have any work experience either, and I’d never in my life written a CV. I’m sure people used Skype at the time, but my mom and I talked by phone. Internationally. I’m pretty sure she ran up a three-digit bill.

Oxford wasn’t a perfect experience by any means; I had to attend an ESL course I didn’t feel I was getting anything out of, and I was put up with a host family that I got along with so poorly everyone was relieved when I was moved to a flatshare for my last week. That flatshare was in Jericho, which is a ten-minute walk to the very middle of Oxford — possibly the middle of Oxford itself; I’m not that familiar with what falls where geographically — and it was the biggest room I’ve ever been in, and maybe my favorite week of my life, perhaps second to the week my best friend was here in London last year, the first week I was here — and even then there were stressors because I had to flathunt and wasn’t exactly swimming in savings.

Oxford suited me in a way I’ve never felt any other place suit me before. I felt at peace there. I was on my own, but I didn’t feel it. I wanted to stay. I really did.

I just didn’t know how to, so I moved back to Spain.

Fast-forward six years, or wait: let’s have a little montage of those six years first. Started an English degree in my hometown in Spain; dropped out as I couldn’t afford the tuition. Proceeded to spend five years at home, going out of the house maybe once a month, once every few months, to the library or when I had to buy something, which was rare because my family was pretty damn poor and I had the internet to keep me company. I wrote a lot of fanfic and I wallowed and my anxiety got so bad I eventually asked my GP for antidepressants. Those helped. In August 2012, I started paroxetine and quit writing. I tried to sell bits and bobs on eBay. Then in December, I opened a photography print shop on Etsy.

My laptop was on its last breath, and I couldn’t blog, or design, or do any of the things I was now realizing might be a viable career — the only career in a job market where the only available positions ever were door-to-door salesmen; a job market where a street-long queue waited to give in their CVs for a retail job that popped up behind my building once. I ran a crowdfunding campaign, one of the most stressful experiences of my life, bar having to pay rent and flathunt. New laptop led to this blog (with help from my friends, and with help from a specific friend for the hosting of this site as well), and then, on my birthday, I opened a design shop. November 2013. I was 24 at that time.

I started thinking about taking the leap to London. My laptop allowed me a movable source of income, a growing source of income, and my best friend started planning a trip to London to see her friend Ashley, who was doing a semester abroad here. My home life had been a toxic environment for a long time, and even though I could have saved up further, I knew if I waited, not only would I not see my best friend for god knows how long (we first met face to face in London in 2008, for one morning) but I’d never have the courage to jump on a plane on my own and book a hotel on my own and start flathunting on my own.

So I booked a flight, and I booked train tickets to Madrid. I bought a suitcase and got another from a friend of my mom’s. And I came here thinking, well, if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. I may only be here a week.

–

It’s been eleven months, and sometimes I’m so proud of myself for having made it this far. Sometimes, however, there are weeks like this week, where I need to flathunt and I’m still broke and my anxiety isn’t triggered by my toxic living environment but my financial stressors, constantly. I keep breaking down.

But I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to move back to Spain; I don’t want to leave England. Not for long, and not for home, not when summer’s approaching — braincell-killer summer in Spain; so much nicer and more productive in the UK for a photographer and model! — and it’s my parents’ turn to host my grandma, so I wouldn’t even have a room of my own there.

For the first months I was here, I skyped my mom daily. I fell into a bit of a depression hole in October and it went down to several times a week, once a week, sometimes longer periods without. My wifi fails and it frustrates me when I’m already doing badly with my mental health. But we still communicate — through twitter DMs, of all places. No huge phone bill is run, and I get to see my darling cat up on the screen, sometimes, though I miss him most of all because I can’t exactly communicate with him.

I’ve thought about going to Europe, finding cheaper places and traveling a little, for blog content, because it may well be cheaper than living in London for much longer, because maybe I’d eventually be close enough to Spain to visit my back and do it all over again.

I don’t know if I have the strength, but I’m thinking about it. And after that, maybe I’d be making enough to live in Belsize Park again, or give up the London thing and go back to Oxford.

Either way, this entire thing couldn’t have happened six years ago, and if I didn’t have the Internet none of this would have worked. I’ll refer you to the contents of my bag on that train from Stansted to London, and the person who took that picture — someone I met online a full decade ago.

—

I wrote this post for the Second Time Lucky campaign with Ocean Finance. I’m hoping they can help me get back on my feet, and have a clearer head when I consider options like ‘move to Berlin for a month because it’s cheaper there and you’ve always wanted to go to Germany, self, don’t front, you’d swoon in the little towns and take all of the selfies.’

Also in partnership with Legal & General. My entire income comes from cameras, laptops, blogs — technology has basically changed my life for the better, and given me options where there would have been none otherwise.

Because if you can’t reflect on what you’ve accomplished on your birthday, when can you?

1. Started a design business — or started freelancing as a designer, whichever. I filled up my Etsy shop in the wee hours of November 8, 2013, and hopefully I’ll have redesigned all the graphics by the end of the weekend. I’m also raising my prices tomorrow, so if you’ve been thinking about hiring me, today would be an excellent time!

2. Discovered print design via media kits, and realized if I could only ever do print design with the occasional logo and larger project thrown in, I would be a happy designer.

3. Designed a magazine cover with my face on it. This was last week, but it counts.

4. Modeled professionally — i.e. for money — for the first time in my life.

5. Was on a boat also for the first time in my life. For a shoot. Wore a wedding dress for the first time in my life, also for a shoot. Modeling is kind of awesome, but can be terribly exhausting, too.

6. Attended my first ever blogger event. It was interesting. My social anxiety reached highs (lows?) I’d forgotten it could reach, but I’m glad I went.

8. Photographed a fashion shoot with a full creative team for the first time in my life. It was one of those experiences where you learn a few things the hard way — both about yourself and about other people, the creative industry, the importance of agreements and so on. I haven’t shared this shoot on the blog yet, but I will sometime this month. I’m proud of those photos, and I enjoyed working with the creatives on that team.

9. Photographed products for money for the first time! That’s another shoot I’m dying to share with you guys. Not only did I photograph them, but I also modeled them. Self-portraiture commercial photography is so much fun when you’ve got a little bit of help.

10. Photographed real-life people who were actually there to be photographed. Not for money, yet, but hopefully sometime soon. I’ve posted two bits of shoots so far: Christine Cherry and Leigh Travers. But there’s a fair bit more.

Another beauty shoot I need to post: Paulina Maria (model) styled by herself and made-up by Bethany Owen, who styled and MUA’d and organized the boat shoot above.

11. Volunteered to photograph a Pride event. Need to share those photos on the blog, too, probably. This list may be a list of posts to come, ha.

12. Got used to getting out of the house and walking at least ten minutes every day again for the first time since I dropped out of college (again) in 2009.

13. Went off antidepressants. It was horrible. I needed a change, and I stabilized eventually, but I had some of the worst days I’ve ever had. I was suicidal and crying and couldn’t do anything.

14. Had a lot of breakdowns over money. Had some of the truly worst days of my life. Survived them all.

And made a book to remember it.

15. Started making money regularly, if only because I needed it to stay housed and fed. Didn’t always make it on time, but things worked out somehow. In this new year of my life, I would like to take the “somehow” out of the equation.

16. Flathunted for the first time in my life. It was horrible. It did a number on my mental health. It really was my least favorite thing I did this year. The thought of having to do it again sometime makes me understand why people pay exorbitant agency fees. Then again, I’d probably have had less trouble flathunting if I’d had that kind of cash. Things worked out, anyway. Somehow. Stroke of luck. I don’t want anyone to think there’s a trick or a way to make it through flathunting in London on a tiny budget unscathed. There isn’t, unless you have a stroke of luck.

17. Lived in Ciudad Real, Spain, with my parents and sister and cat; lived in Belsize Park with my best friend for a very short time; lived in Leicestershire with a friend I met through this blog for another short time; lived in Ladbroke Grove with two cats and a puppy (and a landlady); lived in Streatham with a kitten (and no one else); lived in Crouch End with a flatmate whose father was the owner of the flat; lived in Hampstead Heath with a host family (and another lodger); lived — live — in Belsize Park in a rented room in the landlady’s flat, with said landlady and two cats and another lodger (and as of today, one besides).

There was a lot of moving. A lot of temporary solutions and things that didn’t work out. I have a year-long lease now, and I’m hoping it will last the year, at minimum. See #16.

There were also quite a few cats.

This is the one I was tasked with keeping alive for a week.

18. Wrote for money for the first time in my life. Truly never thought I’d be able to make money off my writing, so it’s been an interesting turn. I need to be more consistent about it, because I truly suck at that bit, but there’s potential for regular income and that’s really important to me.

19. Had a crush on a real live person for the first time in ages. I forgot about it until a few weeks ago, and then I was like, wait, no, it wasn’t that long ago that I last had a proper crush. I was still on antidepressants, so it was a bit different from crushes past, but it was definitely a crush. It’s just good to know I haven’t lost my ability to be attracted to real-life people, you know? Years of basically being a hermit can make you wonder.

20. Was on my own for my birthday for — the second time, actually. First was in college, the first time, when I was in a dorm. Similar bad place, similar journaling bits, only now I depend on myself, and I mostly make it work. But I haven’t cried in a really bad way yet, and that’s kind of amazing.

21. Skipped the Spanish summer, and could not be happier about that. Finally. (Sorry I missed my sister’s birthday, but you know. I wasn’t in the country.)

Not that summer skipped London, but it wasn’t awful nearly as frequently.

22. Designed a mockup of my ideal blog, and delegated the coding to a friend. This was also last week, and it also still counts. I’m straightening out my branding and I’m very, very happy with the way it’s turning out.

23. Invested in a few things — was able to invest in a few things — starting with a tripod and a tablet, and ending with a flight to another country for the purpose of a trip to see my best friend or maybe staying, if I could make it work for me.

24. Made it work for me, and stayed in London. Six months last week. When 2013 started, I’d made that the year I got out, and it never happened — but it happened four months into 2014. Despite all the stress, all the worrying, all the breakdowns, all the times I’ve missed my cat and my guitar and my mom, not necessarily in that order; despite how hard it’s been, I’m so, so, so proud of myself for taking the plunge and getting that flight ticket.

I try to keep that in mind, because it was a true display of bravery that I didn’t think I was capable of. I really thought it would never happen, not on my own. But I’m here, and I’m finding my footing, and all through the pessimistic bits, all the hopelessness, this is where I want to be. This was my dream move, and I made it happen.

—

So, those are some things I did when I was 24. I still need to go through my 25 Before 25 list and see how hard I failed at it, but I did make progress on some of it. And then I’ll see about putting together a 26 Before 26 — or maybe not until I’ve accomplished at least 50% of the 25 list. That seems doable, yeah? I think it does.

Back to work now — that’s what I’m doing for my birthday, trying to use the motivation of a new beginning to get on track. I blogged about this on Tuesday, and my birthday wishlist is still open if anyone wants to buy me anything. Like I keep saying: book me for a shoot and I’ll buy that 50mm lens and use it on you. Do it for my birthday. Or for yourself. I do take excellent pictures, and I do excellent design things with them.

The first two months I was in England, I basically moved every other week. And I didn’t know where in London I wanted to live, so I was open to a lot of areas — and did a lot of widespread flathunting that had me going places for flat viewings where, in retrospect, I would not have liked to live. Even though I didn’t end up at any of those places, I still got the chance, for lack of a better word, to live in a few different areas in a very short amount of time, and I thought I’d share my impressions with you.

1. Belsize Park/Chalk Farm (North West) / April 28—May 5

I’m splitting the area here because I’m not sure what it actually counts as. Annemari and I booked a twin room in a hotel on Primrose Hill Rd, just around the corner from Adelaide Rd, and the closest station map-wise is Chalk Farm, but we walked to Belsize Park Station on a daily basis because it was a much nicer walk; Chalk Farm is really boring. I’m not actually sure what’s there, though I know there’s a big Morrisons down there somewhere. On the opposite side from where we were.

Anyway, I basically fell in love. It’s not super well-equipped compared to other areas, but there’s a really nice Starbucks on England’s Lane, some small shops, a rather ugly Tesco, and on Haverstock Hill where Belsize Park Station is there are a lot of cafés and a Budgens and a pharmacy/beauty Boots and a bookshop and whatnot. Not too far off there’s Hampstead and Hampstead Heath, and if you walk south you hit Primrose Hill, though I haven’t been there yet. (Annemari and Ashley went there the day I took lorazepam and accidentally napped from 11 AM to 2 PM.) The bus connections are fairly good, though you mostly have to take two buses if you want to go somewhere off the Camden Town—Holborn—Pimlico path. But then you’ve got the northern line at your disposal, and even taking two buses takes a fairly short time to leave you anywhere in central London, so it works out.

The area just off Primrose Hill Rd, on Adelaide Rd and Fellows Rd, has a few council houses that look extremely uncomfortable — I went to a couple of flat viewings there and I would have been grossed out of my mind to live there, despite the flats themselves being perfectly nice. But other than that it’s just gorgeous — lots of pretty doors and steps and railings and green. It’s residential, so it doesn’t feel as London-y as other areas, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

1.5. Marylebone (Central) / May 5—May 6

I didn’t get to live here, but I was around quite a lot my first week in London because it was where Ashley lived. I loved it a lot, a lot a lot, at least until I spent a night at a hotel and realized it was incredibly noisy. Even with the window shut I could barely hear my mom on Skype… or sleep. I would have got used to it, I’m sure — I got used to sleeping with construction work outside the window in Hampstead Heath — and in fact, even when I closed my flathunting search to North West London, I kept an eye out on that area. Presumably there are better soundproofed buildings than the last-minute hotel room I found on Expedia for £40, but even if there weren’t, it would still be fucking Marylebone, which is beautiful and London-y and full of shops and restaurants and activity in all the best ways.

2. Ladbroke Grove (West) / May 14—May 21

This was interesting to me — I wasn’t used to walking ten minutes to everything yet, so the walk to anywhere with shops or cafés from the street off Harrow Road where I lived felt extremely long. It was actually seven minutes to a massive Sainsbury’s, and you got to walk over a canal to get there, so I don’t know what I was thinking.

Ladbroke Grove itself is a bit messy, but the numbered avenues off Harrow Rd were urban residential, with really good bus connections to the city. Notting Hill is fairly close, and Shepherd’s Bush has really good train and tube connections. It’s also really kind of nice at night — or at least the street just outside the station and some of the streets I saw from the bus back home from there are.

So it was interesting in the sense that I wasn’t used to walking places yet and I had a travelcard and was still going to flat viewings all over, even once going all the way to Mile End and coming back on a bus to Bank to take the tube from there. I was so proud of myself because I went back home using a different route — I wanted to see a little bit of the city, and Bank is so pretty (and eerily dead) at night.

I wish I’d taken more pictures. It wasn’t the nicest, but it was all right.

3. Streatham (South) / May 21—May 30

Streatham taught me everything I know about overground trains. I was there catsitting, and it was miserable out all week, and I was tired and exhausted so I slept a lot, got some hot food in me, and began the slow, uphill climb of catching up on work. That’s where I finished (most of) the design for The Luminous Kitchen, on the couch in the living room with a kitten on the back.

It was a long way to London on the irregular trains, and halfway through I managed to get a place for two weeks with potential for a lease, so I didn’t venture in much. I think that happens a lot when you live in the suburbs — it happened (happens) to me in zone 2, even, though part of that is the fact that I work from home and don’t have to go anywhere, so spending money on transport is hard to justify. I’m working on it. But it was good for me to take it easy in Streatham, with a lovely one-bedroom flat and a kitten both all to myself for the week. I think I only ended up going to Streatham High Rd twice, and the first time I just kept walking and walking and ended up in Tooting Bec. It was exhausting, but I found my way back and also the path I was supposed to have taken, which was a weird lane with a couple of tunnels and whatnot. Super charming, actually, and once again, I wish I’d taken more pictures. I also think I’d feel differently about it now that I’ve got used to ten-minute walks.

I didn’t feel all that safe walking around there, or walking from Streatham Common, but there were families around and it wasn’t bad. The houses were nice, in a less posh residential way than Belsize Park or West London, but nice. I really liked the train stations. I got to stop at Clapham Junction a couple of times and, all right, that station wasn’t much to look at, but I got there by bus when I headed over with my luggage and the outside of it, even when it’s pouring, is just stunningly beautiful in a completely different way than most of London or the residential areas are. It was good to find that out, and to see Fulham Broadway, which is also awfully charming, from the bus. I also learned more about Wandsworth and Balham and even Surrey, though obviously I never went that far. Never went further than Streatham Common on the train. But it was a good experience.

4. Crouch End (North) / May 31 — June 13

I went to a creative industry meet-up while I was living in Crouch End and when I told someone that was where I lived, she made a face. I… don’t get the aversion to Crouch End. I thought it was wonderful. The transport links are a bit questionable, but I got used to the more sparse train timetables in Streatham, and if you use public transport on a daily basis, a weekly or monthly travelcard would make the extra transfers and additional fares unnoticeable. If you’re okay with it taking an hour or so to get to central London, and I was at this point, it’s more than worth checking out.

My two favorite things about this area were the brick-heavy architecture, all these beautiful, beautiful houses and greenery around, and the Crouch Hill shopping area. There was a big Sainsbury’s near where I was staying — it was just near Harringay station and they have a megastore on Harringay Green Lanes — but the Crouch Hill Broadway has everything. It’s also lovely to walk around in. It’s this little, super well-cared for village, of sorts, and the street is lined with supermarkets, local and chain, and coffeehouses, and restaurants, and butchers and grocers and banks and everything you could possibly need.

The one minor problem is that the hill is very hilly indeed. The streets are steep as fuck. But they’re also awfully cozy. The whole area felt like its own little bubble. And I was super into that.

5. Hampstead Heath (North West) / June 13—September 1

Living in Hampstead Heath made me put my foot down about where I wanted to flathunt, because everything else paled in comparison to Hampstead and Belsize Park, and I mean, I was still up for Marylebone and Crouch End, but I’d rather find a place I could walk to and save time and money that way, since that meant I wasn’t going to flat viewings at opposite ends of the city and wasting hours upon hours on public transportation with the same likelihood of failure I would if I stuck to an area I already knew I liked.

Hampstead Heath is a lovely, lovely area to live in. The houses between Keats Grove and Hampstead are full of charm, and the little roundabout south of Hampstead Heath station, and South End Rd — it’s so lovely, especially in autumn, with its multicolored leaves and the two red phone booths in the middle of the road, and the Marks & Spencer (small) supermarket and my favorite Starbucks of all the Starbucks I’ve been to. I never got around to trying Le Pain Quotidien, but there was that, too. And it’s walking distance to both Belsize Park and Hampstead. You get to Belsize Park down Pond Street and the Royal Free Hospital, and there’s a little shortcut between a children’s school and a church that’s all leafy and lovely. Hampstead is a little harder depending on where you are — I was at the bottom of South End Rd, so it was uphill, but the walk was nowhere near as steep as Crouch End. Roslyn Hill has some of my favorite houses in the area but absolutely nothing useful for a good while, so it gets a bit exhausting.

My impression is that within Hampstead and Belsize Park, the closer you get to the Heath, the earlier and calmer the nightlife gets, and it’s not like the area’s a party zone. At all. Not even close. But it was funny to me that Starbucks there was always dead on Sundays (my assumption: family day, rest day), whereas the Starbucks on England’s Lane is always dead on Fridays. Skews a little younger/less settled the closer you get to Chalk Farm. I could absolutely be wrong, though.

But Hampstead Heath is beautiful. As far as transport, it shares a lot of buses with Belsize Park, plus the 24 straight to Pimlico, which is the poshest fucking bus I’ve ever seen in my life. I love it. The inside is designed with the same sensibilities as a hotel. And wherever you are, you can get to a tube station on the northern line fairly easily, plus there’s Hampstead Heath, which is the overground and has trains from Stratford to Richmond — also pretty handy.

Basically, it’s awesome. And I kind of miss that roundabout sometimes. And the Starbucks.

6. (back to) Belsize Park / September 1—now

I can’t believe I ended up here after all. I was a mess for a lot of the summer, even as I tried to get back on track with my work and venture into photography and modeling, so my budget was still a disaster. I think at the end of the day I had as much of a chance focusing my efforts here (with invaluable help from my friend Maria, who saved me from insanity by scouring through flat listings for me so I wouldn’t get caught up in it and have a breakdown) as I did spreading them further out, and it made sense to me on basically every level. Better stay somewhere I want to stay, you know? So I can accumulate stuff, so even if/when I move out to another place, I probably won’t want to stray far.

I’ve ended up on one of the streets Annemari and I walked down to get to Belsize Park Station — remember how I said we did that because it was prettier? Yeah. My section of the street in particular is just — yeah. And if you turn the corner just outside my building, there are some seriously lovely flat blocks. They’re not amazingly fancy or anything, but they look cozy and well cared-for, and some of them have lovely driveways that I would love to shoot in.

It’s quiet, and the houses are beautiful in an old, lived-in sort of way, and there’s a lot of greenery and a lot of people walking dogs and babies. There’s always a few people around but not very many, and it feels safe. I really love it. I love going out when it’s warm, and I love going to the supermarket at night on Haverstock Hill with all the lights on from cafés and restaurants and the people milling around without making any fuss. There’s a glow from the station and some of the houses on the street I usually walk down make me think of Peter Pan.

It does sometimes feel like I’m in a different town entirely because I don’t get to London much, and when I do the contrast is very sharp. But Camden Town is half an hour away by foot, and I could literally walk through Regent’s Park and be on Great Portland Street in under an hour. One day I’ll do that. One day. When I’ve made a dent in my photo backlog and feel comfortable adding a whole lot more pictures.

I’m really, really happy. I still can’t believe it’s where I ended up.

Back in June (hold tight, you’re going to be seeing a lot of “back in [month long gone]” bits this coming month), I lived in Crouch End, near the Harringay train station, for two weeks. In retrospect, I regret never walking into the library, which was on my way from the station to my house. Still, those first few weeks — months — were rough, so it’s understandable. I was very stressed. One of the days I was there, to make myself feel a little better and recharged so I could work, I went out for a photo walk around the neighborhood. That may be a generous term for how far I went, to be honest. Two-block radius, maybe. I was really busy, and stressed, and I didn’t want to get lost.

It was lovely, because Crouch End is really lovely, and it was summer, which is good here in England, not a braincell killer like it is in Spain, and I really needed it. And I took a lot of pictures. Which I am sharing with you today.

In case you haven’t heard of it before, which is entirely likely and I hadn’t either until I replied to someone’s tweet looking for a flatmate, Crouch End is a residential suburb in North London. It’s not super far out, but it is fairly far out. It’s zone 3, and you should never believe anyone advertising a room there that praises its transport links. In my experience you need a minimum of two transportation methods to get from Crouch End to anywhere else in London, whether it’s two buses or a train switching to the tube or overground switching to the tube. And the thing about trains is that they run way less often than buses or the tube.

The buses, though, have a whole “hail and ride” thing for sections of their route, which I’d never seen before in London. They basically stop at every corner if you press the button or someone’s waiting for it, which is very handy, especially when you’re carrying bags full of groceries from way down the hill. Those hills are steep.

Because of the hills and the tricky transport, you feel a bit like you’re in a bubble, and that feeling gets even stronger in a really cool way when you go to the shopping village. It has this vibe like you’re in your own actual town, and it has everything. It’s something I’ve missed since I moved to Hampstead — I love it here, and I’ve found some nice places, but nothing beats having literally every chain supermarket on the same street.

So that was very charming, though I have zero photos of it. Alas. What I have photos of is the block where I lived, which was entirely made up of residential houses and buildings. Very pretty ones. And flowers.

I haven’t suddenly become rich. But if I did get rich, or at least become financially stable, this is something I would really like to do: spend a weekend — in the fall or spring — in Paris. It’s not going to happen any time soon… but I can still dream about it. And wouldn’t it be amazing if I got to spend my birthday weekend in Paris?

My search: London to Paris, November 7 to November 9. My initial results:

On Amadeus.net, you trip starts with a flight. You don’t have to buy it, and in fact it’s a non-transactional site — you just have to save it. You can save several options. You can look up flights for friends and save options for them, too. I was tempted to look up flights for my best friend from Estonia, but thought that might be taking it a little too far for a little bit of purely-fantasy-to-me travel planning.

Like many booking sites, Amadeus also lets you see the price defaults and minimums for the days around the ones you’ve picked. If you go back to October, there are several stretches of time where you can get a return flight for under £60. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t actually going and I could stick to my guns and have it be my birthday weekend. Old habits die hard, y’all.

I did, however, think about my flight requirements. If I wanted to get the most out of the weekend, I’d have to get a late flight on Sunday and an early flight on Saturday or Friday. The thought of spending my actual birthday on a plane and around airports — with luggage and by myself; it’s only having to carry my luggage that brings out my reluctance to fly — makes me a bit queasy, so Friday it is. There’s no way I’m getting anything done before my flight, but I do have to get to the airport, so an ideal outbound time for me is neither too early in the morning nor too late in the afternoon. You can set a window of time, among other things, so I selected 9 AM – 1 PM:

And got new search results:

The new options aren’t much more expensive than the ones before, and they have me flying from and into Heathrow, which I’ve only been to once and ended up going to Gatwick because I missed my flight so I never actually flew from Heathrow, I don’t think, unless I flew into Heathrow that one time? I can’t remember. I don’t think I did. It’s a bit fuzzy. The days I arrived and left the UK when I spent three weeks in Oxford back in 2008 were both absolutely awful.

Anyway, new search results, and I picked based on time. When you ‘select a flight,’ you get links to various booking sites along with a price list. I never sought out these tools until I moved to London, and found that there really is a significant difference between booking sites when you’re getting a flight, or a hotel.

I’m not ready to buy yet, though, so I just click “Add to my plan.” Since I haven’t created a plan yet, it asks for a name for the plan (“Paris Birthday Weekend,” duh) and sets it up with the default variables. This (minus the picture, I picked a different one before I screencapped it) is what comes up:

It’s basically a whole planning board for your trip. You can save your searches, flight options, add notes, and add links. Hotel ideas, and all those museums and restaurants you want to try — you can add them to your trip dashboard. You can share the trip publicly, or keep it private. You can invite friends to create accounts at Amadeus and add their own ideas to the same dashboard. It’s a really straightforward way of making sure all your information is in one place, especially when you’re not flying solo.

The site is still in an intermediate stage, so I can only imagine how it’ll look when it’s fully developed! A hotel search would be excellent. They already have some handy tools to help you plan your trip — did you notice the weather note in the flight search results page? I love that.

Ready to go — or think about going — somewhere? Start your own plan here! Feel free to pop me a link to your project if you do. :)

or: What To Expect If Your Familiarity With This Event Is Basically Nonexistent, As Written By An Oblivious Expat

As I mentioned in my pre-carnival post on Friday, I’d never heard of the Notting Hill Carnival before — June, May? Of this year. I’ve been to carnivals and I’ve heard of festivals and I wasn’t sure if it would be more along the lines of quirky pier-like colorful carnival or more along the lines of loud, crowded music festival.

So if you are wondering the same thing, it is the latter. It is a loud crowded festival, and it does have music, and a lot — a lot — of food stalls, and there’s a parade but if you get there after 6 PM, it’s nowhere to be seen. I kind of thought it would just go on all day. Apparently it doesn’t.

I also thought I’d get lost, but it’s impossible. The area is cordoned off properly, no traffic, lots of police, actual fences, the whole nine yards — and the buses that serve the area all go right up to the place the traffic is no longer allowed, so you don’t have to worry about getting off a stop early and having to walk, or going past it. Because your bus will keep going and join five other buses, some of which announce they go to and from the Notting Hill Carnival (wow, apparently that big of a deal? Would we put it up there with like, the Berlin love festival or something? Look, all I know about festivals I learned from movies. Chasing Liberty was great), and then you’ll see the crowds of people coming and going, and then it’s just an issue of picking a path and walking it.

Trains Galore

1. Local transport isn’t twofold: it’s threefold. There’s buses, the tube, and about a million overground trains connecting the inner city with Greater London.

Some are the actual overground, or at least go by that name. There’s a train from Stratford to Richmond that connects Hampstead Heath super well with a lot of far-off areas. There’s the Thameslink, which I found out about the first time I went to Streatham by way of West Hampstead. And then there’s just trains. A lot of trains. Trains is how you get to areas like Tooting, Streatham, Croydon and whatnot, but also how you get to Haringay and Hertfordshire and Surrey. There are nineteen train platforms at Clapham Junction or possibly more — this is based on memory, not factual, and specifically based on the memory of running from platform 17 to platform 1 or viceversa in an attempt to not miss a train by one minute. Because, yeah, trains don’t run nearly as often as the tube does, and a lot of buses are worth tracking online, too, because they’ll show up once every 15-20 minutes.

The only overground train that shows on the tube map is the proper overground — the one that comes to Hampstead Heath — so it was a bit of a pain in the ass figuring out how to get to Streatham the first time I did. The person I was visiting called the train from Victoria the “Victoria line” — but it’s a train, not the tube, and I think it’s the Southern Rail. It’s certainly not a blue line on the tube map.

Then I lived in Streatham for a week, and now I know things like that there are local trains that will also take you as far as Brighton. Also, the area outside Clapham Junction station is bloody beautiful. I wish I’d taken the pictures the day I went down by bus, but I was busy keeping my luggage from rolling down the bus aisle. My bad. I’ll go back sometime.